"By the Lord of Heaven! Burgundy is down!" cried Philip. "Ho, Michael, gallop to Sir Guy de Coucy; tell him to charge with the men of Tankerville, to support the good Duke of Burgundy! Away!"
The sergeant to whom he spoke galloped off like lightning to the spot where De Coucy was placed as a reserve.
"By Heaven! the duke is down, and his banner too!" continued the king, turning to Guerin, who now had joined him. "De Coucy moves not yet. St. Denis to boot! they will turn our flank. Is the knight a coward or mad?--Away, Guerin! Bid him charge for his honour."
But the king saw not what De Coucy saw, that a fresh corps of the confederates was debouching from the road behind the imperial army. If he attacked the Flemings before this body had advanced, he not only left his own rear unguarded, but the flank of the whole army totally exposed. He paused, therefore notwithstanding the critical situation of the Duke of Burgundy, till such time as this fresh body had, in the hurry and confusion of their arrival, advanced between him and the Flemings.
Then, however, the fifteen hundred lances he commanded were levelled in an instant: the trumpets sounded, the chargers sprang forward, and, hurled like an avalanche against the flank of this newly arrived corps, the squadron of De Coucy drove them in pell-mell upon the Flemings, forced the Flemings themselves back upon the troops of the emperor, and left a clear space for the soldiers of Burgundy and Champagne, to rally round their chiefs.
"Brave De Coucy!" cried the king, who had marked the manœuvre. "Good knight! Stout lance! All goes down before him. Burgundy is up. His banner waves again. Ride, Walter the young, and compliment the duke for me. Who are these coming down? I cannot see for the dust."
"They are the burgesses of Compiègne and Abbeville, and the oriflamme, sire," replied Guillaume des Barres. "They want a taste of the fight, and are forcing themselves in between us and those Saxon serfs, who are advancing straight towards us."
As he spoke the men of the communes, eager to signalise themselves in the service of a king who had done so much for them, marched boldly into the very front of the battle, and mingled hand to hand with an immense body of German infantry that were approaching rapidly towards the king.
The French communes, however, were inferior to the burly Saxons, both in number and in strength; and were, after an obstinate fight, driven back to the very foot of the mound on which Philip was placed. The knights and men-at-arms who surrounded him, seeing the battle so near the monarch's person, charged through the ranks of the burgesses, and, mingling with the Saxon infantry, cut them down in all directions with their long heavy swords. The German cavalry again spurred forward to support their own communes; and the fight became general around the immediate person of the monarch, who remained on the summit of the hillock, with no one but the Count de Montigny, bearing his standard, and Sir Stephen of Longchamp, who had refrained from following the rest into the melée.
"For God's sake! sire, retire a little!" said the knight: "if you are hurt, all is lost."